Ideology of Hate: Feminism in 1972

Robert St. Estephe–Gonzo Historian–is dedicated to uncovering the forgotten past of marginalizing men. “Gonzo journalism” is characterized as tending “to favor style over fact to achieve accuracy.” Yet history – especially “social history” – is written by ideologues who distort and bury facts in order to achieve an agenda. “Gonzo” writing is seen as unorthodox and surprising. Yet, in the 21st century subjectivity, distortion and outright lying in non-fiction writing is the norm. Fraud is the new orthodoxy. Consequently, integrity is the new “transgressive.”

Welcome to the disruptive world of facts, the world of Gonzo History.

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It was forty-one years ago to date,

Libbers spewed out choice words of hate.

Now their style is but a stream of bile,

When they bark we must salute them: “Heil !”

On September 13, 1972 a public conference (no men allowed) was held by the women’s liberation organization named Feminists of New York. The following news report describing its proceedings helps to give proof to a blatant fact that most grown-ups know quite well by now: that feminism is a hate movement.”

The viciously misandric 1972 quotations of Ms. Pat Mainardi which appeared in the daily papers have since become famous, yet in their original context of the convention her words take on a greater weight when it is understood that she was engaged in a calibrated and collaborate effort to alter the focus of the feminist movement from equality to hate. The rhetoric of “equality” survived of course, as a convenient cover for innumerable statistical hoaxes (the “pay gap” fable; the “war against women” fiction; fake rape statistics along with expensive (ie: profitable) “rape culture” propaganda and newly-minted regret-rape and brewsky-rape categories), and the ethos of hatred has, over time, grown. Hatred, we are now led to believe (sometimes characterized through the vogue-word, “rage”) is “empowering.”

It was only three years following this 1972 convention that a prominent but overly optimistic scholar, Midge Decter, noted that “hatred of men is a feminist doctrine” and predicted its eminent downfall. Decter was dead wrong. There was just too much money to be made, too many careers to launch, by means of the shakedown tactics and shrill demands (which, curious as it might seem, were always promptly met by the oppressor class) of those who claimed a fundamental and permanent victim status.

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FULL TEXT: New York – And now there’s a new topic of debate about women’s liberation that’s bound to make at least one-half of the population a bit uneasy – man-hating.

While more than 200 women cheered several speakers gave their personal views on why hating men was an essential subject related to women’s equality. The conference, closed to men, was organized by the Feminists of New York, who had a similar speak-out on rape several years ago.

“We have a moral cause for hating men for they have taken away all our power,” said Barbara Mirnoff of the Feminists, by way of introduction. “Men have imposed their minds and bodies on women and our hatred is a natural response, a rational and political hatred developing from centuries of male rule.”

The women in the audience, mostly young, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, knitting, taking notes, or holding hands, had paid up to $2 to hear speakers like Robin Morgan, editor of an anthology of feminist writings, “Sisterhood is Powerful.”

She read some of her favorite man-hating poems from her new book, “The Monster.”

“I want a woman’s revolution like a lover. I lust for it. How I wish that my tears were bullets to kill what terrorizes in men.”

Janet Bajan, a member of the New York Radical Feminists, drew applause when she said that man hatred was “a protective reaction, a survival mechanism to change the situation in favor of women.”

Pat Mainardi, married, the author of “The Politics of Housework,” and the editor of the Feminist Art Journal, said, “Man-hating marks a turning point in the movement. We have been defensive long enough.”

“People often ask me how women can be man-haters,” she added. “And I wonder, how can we be anything else.” The women cheered.

“We sleep with the enemy to find out his secrets and we pass them on to our allies,” she said, but the audience hissed.

“The only way to win liberation is to make men miserable so they will have no peace until women are free. Married women invented man-hating,” she declared.

One member of the Radical Lesbians claimed that the Lesbians were the original man-haters. But Jill Johnston, a Lesbian who writes for the Village Voice weekly newspaper, said that Lesbians were women lovers, not necessarily man haters. “I don’t really want to waste my energy on encountering men and hating them,” she said, though she expressed some admiration for a Lesbian friend who had physically assaulted men on the street.

The conference almost came to a standstill when one speaker announced, “All you Lesbians out there – in 10 years you’ll be married to some man.”